Tribal Disenrollment in Indian Country Today is an IMMORAL Abuse of Tribal SovereigntyCORRUPT Councils Wield Sovereignty As a CLUB to BEAT the Weak and Destroy Native American's Civil Rights in the Process

Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Another glaring example of "It's okay to be a fake Indian" UC Riverside professor Andrea Smith has been outed for claiming to be CHEROKEE (at least she didn't say she was descended from a "Cherokee princess".

To add insult to injury, UC Riverside is standing by her: “Professor Smith is a teacher and researcher of high merit who, on that basis, earned a tenured faculty position at UC Riverside,” the school said in a statement given to The Daily Caller News Foundation. “The University of California is precluded by law from considering an individual’s ethnicity in any hiring or advancement decisions.” How about lying on an application?

The Beast article quotes David Cornsilk, a Cherokee genealogist, who says he actually researched Smith’s heritage back in 1993 (while she was still an undergraduate) at her request and found absolutely no evidence of Cherokee heritage. Cornsilk says Smith actually approached him a second time in 1997 to look again, allegedly telling him “her employment depended on finding proof of Indian heritage.” Once again, Cornsilk found nothing.But that apparently didn’t deter Smith, who simply continued to claim Cherokee heritage directly or allow others to attribute that heritage to her. In 2008, her failed tenure bid at the University of Michigan caused a significant backlash, with activists claiming the school was marginalizing minority women. A 2011 symposium at Quebec’s Concordia University described her as a “Cherokee Intellectual.” Similar descriptions have been used for Smith for events at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of Toronto.